Re: Task-completion reporting does not reflect -o argument

[Jonathan Dushoff]

Thanks for responding!

etex, pdftex and pdflatex all seem to take the jobname argument, which
may be what's wanted. Alternatively, you could consider mentioning
briefly in the documentation that -o simply moves the output file.

On Thu, Nov 9, 2023 at 1:44 PM Gavin Smith <gavinsmith0123@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Caution: External email.
>
>
> On Wed, Nov 08, 2023 at 03:07:04PM -0500, Jonathan Dushoff wrote:
> > When I specify an alternative pdf target on the command line, the
> > argument is respected, but the console reports that it is not. See
> > below. This can cause serious confusion in complicated work flows, and
> > is presumably easy to fix.
>
> It's not completely straighforward.  texi2pdf calls pdftex, which outputs
> the file in the default location.  texi2pdf then moves the file to the
> output location.
>
> It's possible to output a message about moving the file:
>
> diff --git a/util/texi2dvi b/util/texi2dvi
> index e33d8eea44..47b7a7da68 100755
> --- a/util/texi2dvi
> +++ b/util/texi2dvi
> @@ -595,7 +595,7 @@ move_to_dest ()
>
>      if test "$mtd_sourcedir/$mtd_sourcebase" != "$mtd_destdir/$mtd_destbase"
>      then
> -      verbose "Moving $file to $mtd_destfile"
> +      echo "Moving $file to $mtd_destfile"
>        rm -f "$mtd_destfile"
>        mv "$file" "$mtd_destfile"
>      fi
>
> Then for something like "texi2pdf info-stnd.texi -o foobar.pdf", the
> output finishes:
>
> Output written on info-stnd.pdf (45 pages, 305876 bytes).
> Transcript written on info-stnd.log.
> Moving info-stnd.pdf to /home/g/src/texinfo/GIT/doc/foobar.pdf
>
> You can see the absolute path being used.
>
> However, this also leads to extra messages being printed with --tidy
> The output of "texi2pdf info-stnd.texi --tidy" finishes:
>
> Output written on info-stnd.pdf (45 pages, 305876 bytes).
> Transcript written on info-stnd.log.
> Moving info-stnd.pdf to /home/g/src/texinfo/GIT/doc/info-stnd.pdf
>
> So I'd propose a slightly more complicated change:
>
> diff --git a/util/texi2dvi b/util/texi2dvi
> index e33d8eea44..f486ecffc7 100755
> --- a/util/texi2dvi
> +++ b/util/texi2dvi
> @@ -595,7 +595,10 @@ move_to_dest ()
>
>      if test "$mtd_sourcedir/$mtd_sourcebase" != "$mtd_destdir/$mtd_destbase"
>      then
> -      verbose "Moving $file to $mtd_destfile"
> +      case $oname in
> +        '') verbose "Moving $file to $mtd_destfile" ;;
> +        *)  echo    "Moving $file to $mtd_destfile" ;;
> +      esac
>        rm -f "$mtd_destfile"
>        mv "$file" "$mtd_destfile"
>      fi
>
>
> - unconditionally outputing the "Moving" message only for the -o flag.
>
> The main question is if is sensible to use the absolute file name even
> if one was not given to -o.  I think it would be fine to.
>
> I cannot see any option that could be given to etex or pdftex to
> change the output file, and even if one existed there is a good chance
> it wouldn't work on some versions of TeX.
>
> >
> > I will mention also that the .log file is put in the default place
> > (not matching the pdf file location). This might or might not be seen
> > as an infelicity.
>
> Again, it's done by TeX, and we can't do anything about it, other than
> perhaps moving the log file afterwards, but this isn't worth the trouble
> (and other auxiliary output files like indices, *.toc and *.aux will
> also have the default names).



-- 
Jonathan Dushoff (https://tinyurl.com/jd-pronouns)
McMaster University Department of Biology
https://mac-theobio.github.io/
https://twitter.com/jd_mathbio
http://jd-mathbio.blogspot.com/